Categories help when you know the feeling but cannot name a scene. Keywords help when you remember an action, character, or phrase. A good GIF picker makes it easy to move between those two ways of looking.
For example, someone answering good news may browse “happy,” while someone looking for a particular slow clap will usually benefit from text search.
Categories reduce the first decision
A short category list offers recognizable starting points without requiring a query. Keep labels consistent and avoid creating several categories that users cannot distinguish.
A category is an editorial grouping, not proof of a clip’s meaning in every context. A “celebration” GIF may contain captions or imagery unsuitable for a particular audience. Treat content suitability as a separate decision.
Show the active category clearly. Otherwise, a user searching for a scene may not realize that an earlier category selection is hiding most of the catalog.
Keywords add detail
Text search is useful for visible actions and exact references. Encourage short queries and let the user clear the category without erasing the query. That gives them an obvious recovery path when a filtered search is empty.
Do not describe undocumented operators as supported features. Phrase matching, exclusions, spelling correction, and semantic search require actual implementation. A straightforward title-and-tag search should be presented as such.
Combine them predictably in an API
GIFs.so accepts a query and an optional category. Retrieve current category IDs from GET /api/rest/categories; do not guess IDs from display names. Search results return items, total, and nextOffset.
When either input changes, clear previously loaded results and reset the offset. Keeping an offset from a different query can skip the first page or show an apparently empty category. Cancel or ignore late responses for the previous selection.
The integration guide contains the current request contract, and pagination guidance covers the last-page case.
Evaluate the combined experience
Test a category with no query, a query with no category, a query inside a category, and an empty filtered result. The user should always understand what is being searched and how to broaden it. For the public library, sign in to GIFs.so with a verified account to try both paths.